Yesterday I ran into a friend’s son at Starbucks, while I was waiting for Benj.\u00a0 I didn’t recognize him at first.\u00a0 I did a double-take, because this was a young man, with a beard and all, but something about him looked familiar.\u00a0 He was finishing an iced coffee at one of the central tables.<\/p>\n
“Are you A?”\u00a0 I asked shyly.\u00a0 He smiled and nodded.\u00a0 “I know your mom and dad,” I said, shaking hands.\u00a0 We caught up a little bit, not much to say between a twenty-something and one of his mom’s friends he didn’t even remember, but I love his mom, so there I was.\u00a0 And he was very nice.\u00a0 He told me he was going to transfer to an art school nearby and study film.\u00a0 I told him that Max would be studying film at NYU. I studied his face while he talked; I couldn’t believe how grown-up he was, and handsome.<\/p>\n
“Well, anyway, tell your mom,” I said, smiling and getting into line for my coffee. I had that same feeling I get when I’m out with Nat; like I know people must be watching us and I’ll be damned if I’m going to make eye contact and let them get their shit all over me.\u00a0 And spoil the moment.\u00a0 Because I had really liked talking with A, and seeing how much he had grown.\u00a0 After all, he has a fairly severe disability — Cerebral Palsy, I think — and he gets around in a wheelchair.\u00a0 It’s quite an effort for him to talk, although he clearly enjoys it.\u00a0 But in the years since I last saw him, he had become this young man, out on his own — someone I could chat with while waiting to get coffee.\u00a0 That kind of growth really does happen.\u00a0 Of course he made me think of Nat, and the gentle blooming I have witnessed in him the past two years.<\/p>\n
I was telling Ned this morning, and the first thing out of my mouth was, “A just has so much courage.”\u00a0 But then I stopped and said, “Well, actually, I hate when people say that about me,” about how ‘brave’ I am going places with Nat, working hard at my relationship with him, and his relationship with the world.\u00a0 Brave that I’m his mother, doing the mother thing in such difficult circumstances is the implication.\u00a0 As if there’s some kind of — choice involved?\u00a0 He’s just my son, and I love him.<\/p>\n
They are also expressing admiration, I know that.\u00a0 And that’s what I felt about A, too.\u00a0 But — when people say that to me, still, I always want to scream, “It’s just what I do!\u00a0 I’m just his mother.\u00a0 There’s no “brave.”\u00a0 It just is.”<\/p>\n
Same thing about my friend’s son.\u00a0 This is just his life, and he felt like getting a coffee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday I ran into a friend’s son at Starbucks, while I was waiting for Benj.\u00a0 I didn’t recognize him at first.\u00a0 I did a double-take, because this was a young man, with a beard and all, but something about him looked familiar.\u00a0 He was finishing an iced coffee at one of the central tables. “Are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-pt","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1579"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1581,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1579\/revisions\/1581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}